Ping Pong Diplomacy

Ping-pong diplomacy (乒乓外交) refers to the exchange of table tennis (ping-pong) players between the United States and People's Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s. The event marked a thaw in U.S.–China relations that paved the way to a visit to Beijing by President Richard Nixon. Below is a Yixing teapot made in the 70s to commemorate this event. The teapot features a row of ping pong bats at the middle section of the teapot to mark this event when China and the US restored diplomatic tie.

Teapot of ping-pong diplomacy

The ping pong diplomacy unfolds the story of a landmark trip by the US table tennis team to China in 1971 that eventually led to a visit by US President Richard Nixon to China and the gradual tempering of relations between the two countries. No one can deny that the US-China relationship remains deep and complex, let's take a closer look at how one visit by a sports team made a world of difference.

What makes the whole story so interesting is that it all unfolded very quickly; there weren't really plans in place for a formal visit, and then within the span of a week the US team was making a landmark visit to Beijing, the first group of Americans to do so in an official capacity since the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949. How did such a momentous historical event come about so quickly? Well, the story goes that the previous week, the US table tennis team was in Nagoya, Japan participating in the Table Tennis World Championships. US star Glenn Cowan was getting in some extra practice volleying (is that the term? We'll go with that for now) with Chinese player Liang Geliang. The pair apparently ran over their allotted time in the practice space and were asked to leave by a local official. Cowan had missed his team's bus, which had already left to take them back to their hotel, so he began wandering around looking for a way back to the city. The legendary Chinese player 庄则栋 (Zhuāng Zédòng) saw Cowan and waved him onto the Chinese team bus, which was heading in the same direction. While some members of the Chinese team were cold to Cowan, 庄则栋 presented him with a gift of a silk-screen picture of the Huangshan Mountains, a traditional gift in his native 杭州. He later recalled asking himself, "Is it okay to have anything to do with your No. 1 enemy?"

This friendly exchange did not go unnoticed by Chinese authorities. Though Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had initially denied the US team's request to play exhibition matches in China, news of 庄则栋's kindness prompted a change. Mao was said to remark, "This Zhuang Zedong not only plays table tennis well, but is good at foreign affairs, and he has a mind for politics." Impressed, China's leadership immediately extended an invitation to the US team, and on April 10th, just four days after Glenn Cowan's fortuitous tardiness, the US National Table Tennis Team became the first group of Americans to enter China in decades. The exhibition matches (most of which the Chinese team supposedly let the Americans win) went well, and a year later the Chinese team flew to the US for another series of matches. The US team's visit to China became all the more significant in February of 1972, when US President Richard Nixon landed in Beijing for a week of visits and meetings, forever altering the landscape of Sino-American relations.

President Nixon in the table tennis exhibition hall

Chairman Mao and President Nixon

 
Upon his return to the United States, one of the American players told reporters that the Chinese were very similar to people in the U.S. He said:

"The people are just like us. They are real, they're genuine, they got feeling. I made friends, I made genuine friends, you see. The country is similar to America, but still very different. It's beautiful. They got the Great Wall, they got plains over there. They got an ancient palace, the parks, there's streams, and they got ghosts that haunt; there's all kinds of, you know, animals. The country changes from the south to the north. The people, they have a, a unity. They really believe in their Maoism."

Dehua figurine of Zhou Enlai